


For That Moment I Was Never What I Am

by Anglophile_Rin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AUs, Angst, Character Death, Cheating, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, One Night Stands, War, s09e10 coda, sick kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:57:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anglophile_Rin/pseuds/Anglophile_Rin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are millions of universes spiraling at the same time, and in every single one the Angel of Thursday and the Righteous Man are brought into each others' lives - but only once do they complete their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For That Moment I Was Never What I Am

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from the song "Next Year" by Two Door Cinema Club. It was running through my head the whole time I wrote this and is definitely worth not only a listen, but also a spot on your Destiel playlists.

Dean spends his whole life in one house - up until this point, at least. His dad’s a mechanic, mom stays home and makes pie and supervises homework and coddles him and his brother when they’re sick. They get to an age where they pretend they hate it, but she knows that secretly they don’t, and so she makes them her mother’s tomato rice soup anyway, and checks their temperatures every fifteen minutes.

He has a best friend who lives three houses down. The family is huge, and they all have weirdo names, but Cas is pretty awesome, in a socially awkward and totally nerdy kind of way. The boys grow up together, get in trouble together, find girls together.

Then, one day, completely out of the blue, Castiel is beautiful, and Dean is freaking out because of how proud his dad sounds when he says “There’s no way Dean-o’s gay, he likes girls too much!” with a laugh and a slap on the back, and he doesn’t know what this is if he can’t be gay but Cas isn’t a girl.

And he’s not a brave guy. Or one who’s good at talking about feelings. So he just stops talking to Cas all together. And before long, Dean’s left the state for university, and Cas has, too, and Dean doesn’t have to face sad eyes in homeroom anymore, or an annoying younger brother who wants to know where the messy haired kid down the road is.

 

***

 

Castiel in ten years old when he’s admitted to the hospital. No one knows what’s wrong with him, just that’s he’s tired and achey and his stomach always hurts.

A boy with bright green eyes that crinkle when he laughs is in the bed next to him, rolling his eyes as Castiel over his mother’s shoulder while she worries over the bruises mottling his skin, all in different shades of decay.

He smiles and calls Castiel ‘Cas’ and teaches him how to play a card game called War while he scratches absently at his IV. They play until Nurse Moseley threatens to tan both their hides if they don’t turn off that light and get to sleep right now, and so they turn off the light but spend the next few hours whispering in the dark.

Castiel falls asleep with a giggle on his lips and wakes again the the sound of urgent beeping and heavy footsteps followed by a curtain being drawn and Dean’s mom crying into the shaggy hair of the toddler in her arms.

By lunch time Castiel has a new roommate - a sullen teenaged girl who doesn’t call Castiel anything at all and has no interest in playing cards whatsoever.

 

***

 

Two strangers meet in a hotel bar. On of them is heartbroken, the other just plain broken. They’re exchanging kisses before the scotch the dark haired one ordered for the taller one even arrives.

They fumble into one of their hotel rooms - they’re not sure which, it’s just the first keycard that came to hand- and they don’t say much outside of blasphemy tinged with profanity.

In the morning, the one with the dark, messy hair is sharing breakfast with the man who had broken his heart the night before, and the freckled one with green eyes is clutching the armrest on the airplane, flying back home.

They never exchanged names.

 

***

 

Dean Winchester stays in hell because it took the angels one hundred and twenty years to reach him, and by that point he likes it and so he fights them off with knives and clawed hands and eyes so black they’re more void than presence.

The angel Castiel dies in the siege.

 

***

 

Winchester and Godson huddle together in a trench, sharing the last cigarette between them in a losing effort to stay awake. The nicotine barely touches the adrenaline spiking through their veins, but even that can’t make a dent in the exhaustion of two weeks in wet trenches, chafing in the same fatigues drenched in mud and sweat and blood and rain, and gunpowder long gone liquid enough to drown in.

They smoke it down far enough that Godson burns his fingers before dropping the nub in the dirt, and Winchester leans forward and kisses him, because they’ll both be dead by morning anyway.

 

***

 

A man in a suit with a wonky blue tie passes a guitar-playing busker on a busy street. He drops a five into the open guitar case without looking up from his phone. For the rest of the day he hums the tune to Ramblin’ On.

 

***

 

Dean leaves his number for the hot waiter, but the busboy clears it away with the dishes before Castiel has a chance to see it.

 

***

 

Castiel's roommate was gorgeous. He was everything the nineteen-year-old had ever fantasized about alone in his room, and then some.

They were together for one semester. When Castiel came back from Christmas break, Dean had dropped out of school, gone back home to take care of his baby brother.

He remained everything Castiel fantasized about, alone in their room.

 

***

 

Lisa kisses Dean in the morning, reminding him about the kindergarten interview for Ben that evening. Dean wrinkles his nose, having never heard of anything quite as ridiculous as an interview for a five-year-old.

He’s home from work long enough to strap Ben into the ludicrously complicated carseat taking up half of his baby’s back seat before they make the drive to the private elementary school Lisa had applied for the minute the strip turned blue.

Dean was wondering whether a work emergency or minor heart attack would be more likely to get him out of this, and Lisa was giving him the glare that meant she was reading his mind again.

He expects to see a tiny old woman in a cardigan when he walks through the door, not the hottest guy Dean has ever seen, right down to the sex hair and the photoshop blue eyes and -

“You must be Benjamin. It’s very nice to meet you - I’m Mr. Godson.”

\- holy shit, phone sex voice. It took Dean a minute to realize the guy was motioning to a couple of chairs, and that Lisa was already seated with Ben on her lap. Ben, who was already happily chatting away to Mr. Sexgod.

Godson. Mr. Godson.

Dean had never before so greatly regretted the fact that he ‘discovered’ his bisexuality after he was already married to a woman.

Especially since Ben’s teacher had an eye contact thing going. A very intense eye contact thing.

Lisa teased Dean all the way to the car about his ‘man crush’ (she may not be aware of the whole bisexual thing - Dean had always figured there was no point in coming out if he never planned on doing anything about it). Dean just scowled and hitched Ben further up his hip.

 

***

 

Sixteen-year-old Castiel was screaming at his boyfriend in the middle of the science hall. Dean was bright red and embarrassed, but his stupid pride had him screaming right back.

You fucking slept with Cassie Robinson - Gabe saw you!

Gabe is a dickbag who hates me!

He only hates you because you sleep around!

I only sleep around because you’re so fucking clingy! I’m fucking suffocating, Cas!

You did sleep with Cassie, you total asshole!

No! Fuck! That’s not-

Fuck you, Dean! I fucking hate you! I hope you fucking die!

 

***

 

Dean joined the fucking army. He joined the goddamn, fucking army and he died in a place he had no business even being in. He died in a truck thousands of miles and gallons of ocean away, blown into pieces so small and so charred they wouldn’t let his mother look at him.

Dean joined the bullshit, goddamned, fucking army and he came home in a pine box under a flag that they folded up small and gave to Mary Winchester, who didn’t want a damned thing to do with it.

Dean joined the asshole, bullshit, goddamned, fucking army and Castiel never got the chance to tell him -

 

***

 

Castiel smiles down at the foam heart floating atop his drink, but when he searches the counter for the green-eyed boy, he’s no where to be found.

 

***

 

Dean missed Cas like a hole in his gut that alcohol couldn’t seem to fill.

Miles away, Emmanuel Allen finished his nighttime prayers and kissed his wife goodnight.

 

***

 

Sam still hadn’t forgiven Dean when ‘Dean and Cas’ started.

Like so many of Dean’s life decisions, it started with alcohol.

A lot of alcohol.

Enough alcohol that somewhere in the haze Dean decided that he was so fucking sick and tired of all his relationships getting worse or ending or getting worse by ending or ending by getting worse. For once, he wanted something better in his life.

Cas was something better.

Cas could be something better.

So Dean grabbed him by the not-trenchcoat and pulled him in, crushing their mouths together in something that was two parts desperation and one part whiskey, all underlined by years of UST.

He would have sighed in relief when Castiel kissed him back if he hadn’t been so busy tangling fingers in hair and meeting tongues somewhere in the middle.

Surprisingly little changed, outside of where Castiel spent his nights. They occasionally touch (a brush of hands, a lingering shoulder) or kiss, but more often than not they’re quiet about it, carrying on as usual.

Cas is still Dean’s socially awkward, celestial wavelength of a best friend. They were still fighting hell on one side and hell on the other, fending off earth’s worst by way of ghost or monster or ghoul in between.

Dean and Castiel till both wanted to kill Gadreel with their bare hands (or, failing that, at least an angel blade), and they still fought each other like two goats ramming heads.

They stared and Dean teased. Castiel frowned and Dean drank.

But at the end of every day, Castiel used learned human behaviours to shed his shoes and coat, to fold his pants and his button up shirt before climbing under the scratchy motel-style blanket and pressing close to Dean’s side, resting his head on half of the only pillow.

Sometimes they’d have sex. Sometimes they’d just sleep - or, Dean would sleep while Cas laid silently next to him as sentry against nightmares of hell and purgatory and house fires and demons and Jo and Bobby and Ellen and Kevin and…

Sometimes they’d actually talk. Castiel discovered that Dean talked more, said more, when they were surrounded on all sides by darkness and blankets and the warmth of each others’ skin on their skin and breath in their lungs. Dean would brush his fingertips over Castiel’s skin while telling him secrets and stories in a voice too quiet and matter-of-fact for his words.

Castiel would trace the Enochian sigils he’d carved into Dean’s ribs with intent of grace while trying to put the universe into words.

Dean whispered to Cas that he loved him, fingers stilling next to the stubble on his cheek. Castiel echoed the sentiment in Enochian and Latin and Spanish and German and French with a kiss, pressing against his righteous man from head to foot as if to seal them together with nothing more than a promise and pressure and want.

And all the universes sighed in relief.


End file.
